A response to 'Education and "new literacies" in the middle years' by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. (2024)

Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel's paper 'Education and"new literacies" in the middle years', makes apassionate, well supported and clearly argued case for a differentapproach in engaging our secondary students. They provide a clearlyreasoned set of arguments as to why schools must move beyond thestandard focus of curriculum to broader more 21st century literateapproaches that tap into the social, research and cultural understandingof our students whilst allowing and encouraging the use of newtechnology that students feel connects them. The need to assist ourstudents to operate collaboratively with communication skills, clearlydefined research approaches and ethical awareness of self and others,will ensure they become contributors in a real sense to a globalenvironment whilst using new 'literacies' appropriately andwith purpose.

The article provides examples of excellent approaches: Projectsthat tap into global concerns and issues that require deeperunderstanding, targeted investigation and communication; projects thatuse multimedia to provide students with their required onlinecollaboration, friendship, audience and purpose. The authors mention'affinity spaces' where students can meet and workcollaboratively and share ideas, writing and research. These are ideasand approaches that are inspiring.

In providing students with structure, collaborative opportunities,social and ethical approaches and companionship, the authors argue thateducators allow the students to develop in terms of knowledge andquality of mind. Through approaches that are seen as ethical and caring,they assist the students in becoming responsible citizens of the worldas well as developing a strong sense of self and wellbeing. Like themodels provided by the authors, for example 'iEarn and findingsolutions to hunger', our own school's approach to involvingstudents in a project was designed to extend them.

Master Class at Rutherglen High School

An account of the 2017process by Dianne Kotzur:

The selected students from Years 7-10 began their project bycollaborating on a theme. We discussed how we communicated as a groupand brainstormed the effect it can have to not be able to communicate.This then generated ideas that led to selection of early tasks aroundthe theme of communication. Ideas included a sense of self identity, aconnection to history, a connection to culture, storytelling, culturalsignificance including Aboriginal culture, different languages, visuallanguage (signs and symbols), sign language, non-verbal language (bodylanguage), ability or lack of to express oneself, to create/be differentand forms (such as creative, factual, informative, instructional,poetry, prose and lyrics). The first task involved students selecting asingle word and definition to define themselves. They looked at writtenlanguage and broke letters down into shapes which we used. Some letterswere deconstructed and reassembled into our own letters. We looked atsigns and symbols and techniques of topography, maps and charts and usedthis to investigate the process of cyanotype. We looked at DaVinci's sketchbooks which involve sketching, schematic drawing andannotation and students worked on developing skills in visual and verbalexperiments and reflective annotation. Students used graphic designtechniques to visually represent words, English skills to condense theirlife stories into six word memoirs and art skills to use physical booksto manipulate into new structures or to interpret differently. The groupworks were amongst the most successful. Whilst not everyone was a'driving force', they all worked collaboratively and developeda lot of confidence. The Year 7/8 group focused on the importance andimpact of mass media and social media on their lives- both good and bad.They discussed what they wanted their art 'message' to beabout, and eventually decided on marketing and advertising as a drivingforce. This then informed their discussions about how it could bepresented visually with words and text included. This work was not asplanned as the senior piece. The juniors were much more flexible andwilling to add things as they came up. The Year 9/10 group took adifferent approach. They wanted to highlight a powerful, influentialperson who used words to create change. The age and gender of a majorityof the students influenced their choice of role model. Their workinvolved a lot of research and investigation, which they used as thephysical material to create the art.

The students' research into issues of their own interestculminated in a series of creative interpretations and explorations thatwere unveiled to the town community, school staff, fellow students andparents in the form of a presentation evening where students spoke abouttheir project and hosted an extended exhibition at the local InformationCentre. It was extremely well received by the community and provided thestudents with an audience for their work. As well, it developed theirknowledge and ethical understanding of issues not routinely covered bythe curriculum in individual Learning Areas in the sustained depth thatwas possible in this whole year approach. The students'collaboration across various year levels led to a greater collegialityand greater global awareness--and in the eyes of the community, theybecame ambassadors for a cause, if not 'stewards of theuniverse' as the authors would call it. It is a credit to theteachers involved, Dianne Kotzur and Peter Jakober, that the ideas ofcross curriculum, vertical grouping, affinity spaces, online research,written responses and a range of creative interpretations were some ofthe new literacies involved.

Our 'Master Class' concept was initially developed in2016 by a team of teachers led by Lauren Jess. The first year'sapproach was led by Jade Knight and Christian McCarthy, the second yearby Maxine Cole and Christian McCarthy and this year by Dianne Kotzur andPeter Jakober. The projects were models of collaborative planning andwhole school involvement in terms of team creation, studentidentification and interview process and selection. The curriculum wasnot, however, necessarily focused on global issues as the initialimpetus was to support students who were identified as needing extensionopportunities outside the normal curriculum. The focus in the first yearwas on English enrichment and the next year was a cross curriculumScience and Humanities approach. This 2017 approach, however, was led bythe Art and Technology Learning Areas and generated approaches thateventually led two of the groups to a global focus (as outlined above).The 'Lost for Words' model in 2017 was recognised by the widereducational community as an excellent approach and has the support ofthe staff and community.

Whilst the educational ideas in theory are unquestionably valuable,the reality of incorporating these approaches is sometimes thwarted byeveryday organisational demands. In order for this schoolwide,cross-curriculum example of best practice to be developed and run at oursmall school, time had to be built into the school day by takingstudents from other classes. Teachers worked with these selectedstudents often in their own free periods. Curriculum planning anddevelopment of the program often occurred in teachers' own time.Missing core curriculum sessions and explicit teaching caused issues forsome students even when credit for work done in master class wasarranged. The lack of access for students to You Tube and various othersocial media sites meant frustration in terms of accessing somematerials; it also limited the online aspect of some research.Unreliable internet, intermittent outages and computers that are, shallwe say 'compromised' at times, are aspects of manyschools' digital existence. Accessing motivational speakers andalways having to travel to meet with experts can add to the costs of theprogram. These problems are not insurmountable however.

Access to sites like Zoom would help to alleviate these distanceand remote access issues. Zoom is another excellent example of an onlinenetworking meeting place (an affinity space) where teams and individualscan share ideas. The teacher can be a facilitator or perhaps studentpairs could run alternate sessions. Providing students with lifeexperiences in terms of their communication skills, meeting with peoplein the workforce and providing on site experiences and research are justsome of the scenarios that have to be provided in order to enhance ourstudents' understanding of the world and the role they can play init. Access to new platforms for communication is a way forward.

If research continuously highlights the findings that students wantto be connected, to have continuous communication and to feel they havesomething to say, then we need to ensure we help that happen, but wealso face concerns in this area. Use of phones in class is largelyprohibited, so we need to use common sense in allowing their use insituations of note taking, research and contact, music creation, and soon. At the same time, we need to teach them the ethical behavioursassociated with using the technology in a classroom. We need computersand servers that provide reliable access to the internet. We need accessto sites that are often blocked but again we need to ensure, as theauthors say, that students are taught to use particular sites with care.Teachers need to be skilled up in the use of new technologies. They needto use common sense again and embrace the expertise of students inteaching the class how to create for example, a book trailer ordemonstrate the best way to add in non-copyright music so the trailercan be uploaded to You Tube in order to provide access to a wider realaudience ... (if and when schools unblock student access to You Tube).The ongoing roll-out of the BYO device ensures each student has theirown laptop. Reliance on older computers can then at least be one issuethat is solved. Lack of reliable Wi-Fi is another issue altogetherhowever. We need to rethink timetabling and be more flexible with theway Learning Area periods are allocated. We need to be able to thinkoutside the box. Could we for example offer a new subject for studentsacross year levels; one that adopts the ideas raised by Lankshear andKnobel? In that way the subject could be timetabled'traditionally'. Most of our staff support the ideas behindMaster Class and I am sure they recognise the obvious benefits ofproviding such opportunities to all students. If, however, we couldembrace the concept of these 'new literacies' in all subjectsor have an integrated whole school project that would reach more of ourstudents, we could have a collaboratively selected school or year levelfocus. In that instance, all Learning Areas could have a contribution tomake in one of the 3-5 periods a week they are currently allocated.

If we were to embrace more widely the approach demonstrated by ourteachers in Master Class and highlighted in Colin Lankshear and MicheleKnobel's article, that could become the school's gift to itsstudents. We would then give our students that wider social groupmembership and wider interaction. They would be assisted to participate,to be knowledgeable, culturally informed and empathetic, and they wouldbe socially more aware and globally more connected. Hopefully as aresult, they would also be more personally resilient. We might then haveprovided an opportunity for that 'level of participation inknowledge, innovation and national and global citizenship for a smarter,safer and better world.' (Gee, 2013, p. 205). Oh ... and we mightjust have learnt a few new technologies in the process. It is certainlysomething to aim for.

Reference

Gee, J. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter studentsthrough digital learning. New York: Palgrave.

Kerrie Ware | Rutherglen High School, Victoria